Usage Discussion of WAIT

American dialectologists have evidence showing wait on (sense 3) to be more a Southern than a Northern form in speech. Handbook writers universally denigrate wait on and prescribe wait for in writing. Our evidence from printed sources does not show a regional preference; it does show that the handbooks' advice is not based on current usage <settlement of the big problems still waited on Russia — Time><I couldn't make out … whether Harper was waiting on me for approval — E. B. White><the staggering bill that waited on them at the white commissary downtown — Maya Angelou>. One reason for the continuing use of wait on may lie in its being able to suggest protracted or irritating waits better than wait for<for two days I've been waiting on weather — Charles A. Lindbergh><the boredom of black Africans sitting there, waiting on the whims of a colonial bureaucracy — Vincent Canby><doesn't care to sit around waiting on a House that's virtually paralyzed — Glenn A. Briere>. Wait on is less common than wait for, but if it seems natural, there is no reason to avoid it.